


A Bridge, Burning (in Six Parts)

by whitmans_kiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1981, Angst, Community: rs_games, Explicit Language, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitmans_kiss/pseuds/whitmans_kiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They built the bridge between them in silence and dismantled it much the same.</p>
<p>(Written September 2011.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bridge, Burning (in Six Parts)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the RS Games 2011, Team Remus, Prompt [1](http://rs-games.livejournal.com/103505.html#cutid1). Originally posted [here](http://rs-games.livejournal.com/112743.html) on LiveJournal.
> 
> As always, thanks to the wonderful, darling [ceredwensirius](http://ceredwensirius.livejournal.com/), and to [toujours_nigel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel) for reading this piece by piece. Thanks also to M, for all your support/kittens, and lastly, a quiet thanks to E.

**I.**  
They don’t look at each other during sex, anymore. It’s not until after, when Sirius is curled in to face towards the wall, does he feel Remus' eyes on his back, and the breath on his shoulder is cool and smells like stale toothpaste and sadness. It’s why Sirius can’t sleep at night, anymore.

It’s why neither of them can.

 

**II.**  
It's like Remus doesn't even fucking care sometimes, the way he stays so godsdamn polite and civil, even when they're fighting, which they never acknowledge, because a fight with Remus is never a _fight._ It's always the sound of a teacup settling in its saucer, a jumper being smoothed, a page turning. Sometimes, when things get really bad, the fight escalates into the sound of a quill dipped in ink the color of Sirius' hair, letters being stroked onto parchment that doesn't understand the ink should be tears, instead, or blood, or the days-old spilt coffee on the cuff of Sirius' robes that he hasn't had the heart to clean off, because it's the closest he's been to Remus in weeks. It’s disgusting, really.

They don’t talk about things like normal people, partly because they’re under orders not to say half the things they need to, but mostly because they’ve never had to talk before, and it feels too late to start now. They’ve never needed apologies or explanations; they’ve always had an understanding, a language of their own composed of small gestures and the unwritten word.

Remus is unreadable these past months, and Sirius feels blind.

 

**III.**  
The kitchen door shakes on its hinges as Sirius throws it open, crashing into the flat with a letter crushed in his hand.

“Where were you?” Sirius growls at him, advancing, voice dangerous and low. Remus keeps reading, doesn’t look up from his notes.

“Where do you think I was?”

“Not where you told me, that’s the fuck where.”

“I was in Leeds, like I said.”

“Two weeks, Remus! Two weeks, when you said you’d be gone three days!” Sirius slams his hand down on the table, rattling a teacup and upsetting the butter knife from Remus’ plate.

“I was mistaken.”

Sirius swears at him loudly; the hand disappears. The footsteps ring in his ears as he paces the kitchen like a caged animal. Remus turns to the next page in his notes, picks up his pencil, makes a mark next to the second paragraph.

“I’m here, now. So what does it matter?”

There is an instant in which Sirius thinks he might hit Remus, but it is only an instant, and he closes his eyes when he sees Remus brace himself anyway for the blow.

And when it doesn’t come, and when instead Sirius' footsteps come quietly to a stop, Sirius suddenly finds he can’t breathe, and he is sorry, sorry for it, all of it, as colors splotch behind his eyelids like bright oilspots.

Remus says something, and Sirius doesn’t hear it, certain it is a lie. A breath, then another, but it’s not his. Sirius opens his eyes (still can’t breathe; he still can’t _breathe),_ standing in the middle of the kitchen, fists hanging at his sides, body coiled, taut and ready; the muscles in his neck tighten as he clenches his jaw to keep from screaming.

Sirius doesn’t move; never lays a hand on him. He doesn’t have to.

 

**IV.**  
They are as close as it is physically possible for two human beings to be, slicked against one another and twisted up like the sheets beneath them, sweat beading with their breaths so close that even the air is saturated with carbon dioxide like poison in their lungs.

There’s no kissing, just the crush of mouths and lips catching teeth asymmetrically, as though they’ve been taught the theory but never done the act before, least of all with each other. The rhythm they’ve found together is quick, stuttered, not smooth like it used to be; mechanical.

It’s like they’re not human, like Remus isn’t a man anymore, or a lover, just a _fuck,_ silent save for the sharp breaths he exhales against Sirius’ skin on every push. He even feels different under Sirius’ hands, new scars from skirmishes littering his chest, thinner than he used to be. There’s no muttered profanities or invoked deities, no disconnected strings of praise – only the sense of emptiness, the bridge between them long burned, leading them nowhere.

There isn’t any love here, Sirius realizes as his head narrowly misses the headboard, neck thrown back, canting, mouth thrown open in a silent desperate stinging plea as his orgasm slams through him, tainted by the feel of Remus’ fingers around him, slick with come, and he’s going to be sick, ohgods he is going to vomit all over the sheets and he can’t do this anymore, he can’t fucking _do this_ anymore.

Remus shifts off him, off the bed, and excuses himself to the loo. Sirius turns over and presses his face into the pillow – it’s Remus’ pillow, it smells like him, it’s suffocating. He begins to cry.

 

**V.**  
When Moody adjourns the meeting, Sirius remains seated, eyes tracing the wheat pattern printed on Molly Weasley’s cotton tablecloth, selected and ironed to welcome the fall harvest. James is across from him; around the table, other Order members shift uneasily into smalltalk as they gather their cloaks. Peter’s shrill, near-hysterical laugh pinches through the dim buzz of voices as he talks to Remus, making arrangements for some rendezvous or another. Sirius tears his gaze away from the tablecloth and looks up at James, catching his eye.

“I can’t Keep for you, Jim,” Sirius whispers. “I can’t, because I know it’s him.”

James nods once, looks away. He’ll tell Lily, and they’ll use Peter like they all thought they wouldn’t have to, but it had come to this. Sirius can’t prove anything, of course – suspicions don’t mean truth, but they mean enough.

Sirius stays at the table long after everyone else has flooed out, chatting with Molly and Arthur about their new baby, a girl, how charming, such a busy house. He stays as long as he dares before Molly starts asking if anything is wrong, if Remus is all right, and Sirius doesn’t want to have to lie.

The first thing Sirius does when he returns to the flat is decide to get very, very drunk. Remus isn’t there; Sirius doesn’t know where he is (this is not unusual), but tonight he doesn’t care (this, however, is). All he wants is to finish the half-empty bottle of vodka left half-forgotten under the sink, pass out in his chair, and wake up the next afternoon with a hangover painful enough to drown over the ache in his chest.

 

**VI.**  
Remus is not home by midnight.

Remus is not home by two.

Remus is not home by three, or four, or half past five, and when six o’clock breaks with the sun through the curtains, glinting dully in the glass of the empty vodka bottle on the side table, Sirius pulls himself from the sofa and walks heavily to the bedroom. Perhaps this is the bigger infidelity, Sirius thinks, that the reason Remus has not returned isn’t because he’s with another man, but because he’s betraying them all in a greater way.

Carefully, still buzzed but now more sober than he’d like to be, Sirius pulls Remus’ trunk out from underneath the bed and sets it on top of the covers, the lock flicking open with a wandtap.

One by one, Sirius begins to stack articles of Remus’ clothing on top of his old school things, re-folding each jumper with a deliberate slowness, touching the worn fabrics and trying not to remember what the skin felt like underneath them. For the first time in his life, Sirius matches socks together, tucking them together into pairs, tucking them into the corners beneath trousers.

An hour passes as he systematically removes every trace of Remus from the room – books, shoes, parchment Charmed blank – before moving through the rest of the flat, gathering up quills and a coat, filling the trunk and two boxes. It’s more than moving him out; it’s moving out the memories, years of a life welded together now shrouded in dust, looking forward into a future that doesn’t – won’t – exist for them. Sirius neatly stacks the belongings by the door and sits at the small kitchen table facing it, waiting, as if paying respects at a cardboard, leather-bound altar to what was once trust.

The Muggle mailman has come and gone next door before a key turns in the lock and Remus closes the door behind him, says good morning, sees the boxes, sees his trunk, and stops.

They don’t look at each other, even now, not when they haven’t been able to do so for months – how long has it been, Sirius wonders, and finds that he is unable to mark the day.

There’s no goodbye; there’s nothing except silence.


End file.
